If everyone who reads this, or even only those of you who read us on a regular basis, would donate just $5 or $10 to The Automatic Earth, we'll have funding covered for all of 2015 before you can say black swan.

Increasingly over the past year or so, when people ask me what I do, and that happens a lot on a trip like the one I’m currently on in the world of down under, I find myself not just stating the usual ‘I write about finance and energy’, but adding: ‘it seems to become more and more about geopolitics too’. And it’s by no means just me: a large part of the ‘alternative finance blogosphere’, or whatever you wish to

• QE Will Permanently Impair Living Standards For Generations To Come (Guggenheim) • Fed Chases Equilibrium Phantom, Has Not Learnt From The Crisis (Steve Keen) • Fears Of A New Global Crash As Debts And Dollar’s Value Rise (Guardian) • Investors Flee Market At Crisis-Level Pace (CNBC) • China Banks on Sharing Wealth to Shape New Asian Order (WSJ) • China Wants To Compel US To Engage It As An Equal Partner In AIIB (ATimes) • Russia To Apply For

Speculation and expert comments are thrown around once more – or still – like candy on Halloween. Let me therefore retrace what I’ve said before. Because I think it’s really awfully simple, once you got the underlying factors in place. But first, if one thing has become obvious after Syriza was elected to form a Greek government on January 25, it’s that the party is not ‘radical’ or ‘extremist’. Those monikers can now be swept off all editorial desks across

When money managers talk outside their narrow field, nonsense is guaranteed to ensue. No better example than this Bloomberg piece on Ukraine’s ‘debt restructuring’ plans, which are as much a political tool as they are anything else at all. Ukraine’s American Finance Minister has announced a broad restructuring plan with a wide range of severe haircuts for creditors, and she – well, obviously – wishes to include Russia in the group of creditors who are about to get their heads

This is another essay from friend and regular contributor of The Automatic Earth, Euan Mearns at Energy Matters. One comment on my part: Euan says ‘This has lead to speculation that weak global demand, stemming from masked economic woes, may also be playing a key role.‘ I don’t think the use of the term ‘speculation’ is appropriate here, because it seems overly obvious that China’s economic slowdown has played a major role in the oil price crash (and continues to